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It's like Larian decided to give enemies a cheat code where they have infinite AP and no cooldowns on any abilities.

The Kraken summons multiple enemies with 10,000+ Armor and 10,000+ health who can move across the entire map and attack 2-3 times in a single turn? The Sallow Man can stack the same debuff on you for a -9 Constitution penalty? Kemm can kill anyone in two hits with Overpower. Braccus Rex teleports, casts Meteor Shower, and then casts Cursed Fireball. If you're not dead by then the Kraken and Dallas also spam AoE abilities that cover half the map. There is no gear in the game that lets you survive this shit.

It's bullshit, plain and simple. I was actually looking forward to finishing the game and then starting a new playthrough with different companions and builds but I sure as hell won't be doing that now. I'm just going to watch the ending on Youtube.

Someone needs to write a proper review of DoS2 and point out all the bullshit this game has that all the "professional reviewers" who seemingly only played Act 1 have missed or ignored and given it 9s and 10s.

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The final fight is pretty hardcore, yeah. But it's definitely not impossible. Remember you can back out before going down there and make sure you got the best equipment and skills possible. You can also get permanent apotheosis. All the other characters move by the same rules as you do, with the exception of the Kraken who has indigestion and burps up a couple of annoying dudes whenever. But remember they are soulbound to the Kraken, so if it goes down so do they. Furthermore you don't have to defeat them all to win the fight, though I leave you to find out which of them are the big bads.

Sallow Man's debuff can be removed by all heals, I'm sure. Kemm is vulnerable to indirect magic attacks as far as I remember.

I think you can do it if you stretch real good, take a day's break, and come back at it with fresh eyes.


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i think sallow man's debuff can only be removed by bless and (mass) cleanse wounds

keep in mind that you have access to stuff like arrow storm, hailstorm and pyroclastic eruption at your disposal, plus any other source spells can be used free of charge. it's not like any other fight in the game and other rules and restrictions that applied to other difficult fights are waived away in this one. go crazy, use your strongest spells, don't pull any punches

also, figure out which characters are best focused over others. the fight may be easier than you think

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Originally Posted by miaasma
i think sallow man's debuff can only be removed by bless and (mass) cleanse wounds


In my first playthrough the tooltip said X amount of spells could debuff it, but we found that it was also removed by a slew of other spells. Amongst of which were restoration and magic shell (if my faulty memory serves).
I don't know what does and doesn't work now, but whatever the case is; it's worth trying.

That said, yeah, once you have mass cleanse for 0sp then it wouldn't matter.


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The ending is really not that challenging, at all.

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Originally Posted by puff_ng
It's like Larian decided to give enemies a cheat code where they have infinite AP and no cooldowns on any abilities.

The Kraken summons multiple enemies with 10,000+ Armor and 10,000+ health who can move across the entire map and attack 2-3 times in a single turn? The Sallow Man can stack the same debuff on you for a -9 Constitution penalty? Kemm can kill anyone in two hits with Overpower. Braccus Rex teleports, casts Meteor Shower, and then casts Cursed Fireball. If you're not dead by then the Kraken and Dallas also spam AoE abilities that cover half the map. There is no gear in the game that lets you survive this shit.

It's bullshit, plain and simple. I was actually looking forward to finishing the game and then starting a new playthrough with different companions and builds but I sure as hell won't be doing that now. I'm just going to watch the ending on Youtube.

Someone needs to write a proper review of DoS2 and point out all the bullshit this game has that all the "professional reviewers" who seemingly only played Act 1 have missed or ignored and given it 9s and 10s.


Not trying to be an ass here, but I honestly found the final fight to be extremely underwhelming in terms of difficulty.

Adramalihk was way harder.

That was at lvl 18 on tactician btw.

All you have to do is to choose multiple gap closers on your team, and follow Braccus arounds when he teleports. My rogue+warrior LW team took down his physical armor in two rounds and just focused him down while the rest of them brawled.

Last edited by Cavemandiary; 31/10/17 04:08 PM.
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When all else fails, go for charm.

Last time I did this fight, I charmed pretty much their entire team. When the Kraken showed up and brought his squad of bad dudes, I had my own squad consisting of all the bad dudes from the first phase. I then decided to let my 4 guys watch them duke it out among themselves (occasionally threw in another charm of teleport). After a couple turns I actually ran out of "bad" guys and had my team beat on the charmed ones until they were down.

Felt a bit bad for the enemy team when it was over, actually.

Last edited by Try2Handing; 31/10/17 05:51 PM.

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I was able to win in 2 rounds. It's pretty easy trick actually.
On the first round, move your character on higher ground, from where he can teleport Braccus Rex to you. He isn't that strong and you just need to kill him. If Team Lucian is with you, then probably every npc ally will attack Rex. (I made in on Tactical difficulty)

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Originally Posted by puff_ng
It's like Larian decided to give enemies a cheat code where they have infinite AP and no cooldowns on any abilities.

The Kraken summons multiple enemies with 10,000+ Armor and 10,000+ health who can move across the entire map and attack 2-3 times in a single turn? The Sallow Man can stack the same debuff on you for a -9 Constitution penalty? Kemm can kill anyone in two hits with Overpower. Braccus Rex teleports, casts Meteor Shower, and then casts Cursed Fireball. If you're not dead by then the Kraken and Dallas also spam AoE abilities that cover half the map. There is no gear in the game that lets you survive this shit.

It's bullshit, plain and simple. I was actually looking forward to finishing the game and then starting a new playthrough with different companions and builds but I sure as hell won't be doing that now. I'm just going to watch the ending on Youtube.

Someone needs to write a proper review of DoS2 and point out all the bullshit this game has that all the "professional reviewers" who seemingly only played Act 1 have missed or ignored and given it 9s and 10s.



Hear, hear.

I'm not even at the end of the game yet and I'm about to pack it in. This has gone from literally my favorite game, one I couldn't even wait to get home from work to play, to something I'm forcing myself to make progress in because it's installed on my PC. I can't believe something I enjoyed this much turned to shit this fast.

Every single encounter is so set up in the enemies favor it just isn't fun anymore. The point isn't whether I'm able to beat an encounter, it's whether it's actually fun to play, and it doesn't pass that test when every single fight starts with a giant explosion of Necrofire on top of my clustered party (I don't know how people can even defend this anymore, I tried to believe it was just my imagination but since I've been tracking, the last 8 encounters in a row!!!! have all had cursed fire, I am not exaggerating even slightly) and usually on the first enemy turn. I spend my first turn trying to repair the damage and spread my party out (if I didn't reload a save and meta game by moving my toons all over the map, yeah that's great design smirk it's just like tabletop gaming, remember when your DM lets you take back your moves, position your party favorably and get a mulligan in combat? FUCK NO, me neither) and they spend their next several turns source vamping me (the Dreamer encounter with Malady, Alexander and Windego stole all 12 source points from my entire party before I could use them because I was spending all my AP trying to get to black mirrors while they spent all their AP cheaply cursing, charming, and burning me to death and then just moving me out of the way if I got close to the mirrors), then charming me and popping every expensive potion and burning every scroll I have. Wtf is that? It's not even tactically sound, the enemy just literally takes control of you and wastes your items, it's nonsense.

I know what I'm doing here, my builds are all basically min maxed, everything is focused, no points are being wasted and I have the best loot I can find in every available slot. In Act 3 I literally one-shot Rhalic because I was so overpowered. Act 3 had no challenge whatsoever for me. Now Act IV is so tedious I want to pull my own eyeballs out so I never have to see the word "Fight!" on my screen again. They pretty much ruined this one for me and I'm really disappointed.

The combat system, at heart, is GREAT. Stop "helping" it by giving every enemy 2-3 times as much health, armor and AP as me, always giving them initiative, and just generally using cheap ass cheesy tactics in every single fight.

Last edited by vometia; 11/12/17 06:44 AM. Reason: formatting
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A couple things you pointed out are more or less true: a lot of fights (I wouldn't say all) are set up in the enemy's favor; enemies use curse a lot; there is almost always some sort of "explosion" aimed at your party in the enemy's first or second turn. Yes, they do all that. And more. But to be fair, I think you should be used to all that already by this point. All those things are there whether the fight is easy or hard.

So try not to let that bother you so much. It seems to me you're not complaining that the game is too hard. Rather, you've been annoyed by enemies' repeated use of "cheap" tactics, and that combat is rarely fair, and then the dream world fight went so horribly wrong that it became the last straw.

That particular fight can be pretty annoying, I'll give you that. They can spam madden and charm on you. But as always, there are tactics to counter the enemy team. Just take a break, chill, then retry that fight when you feel better. Also keep in mind that, there is always a difficulty spike when you move on to a new arc, so don't get carried away by the fact that arc 3 was too easy. Slow down a bit and approach combat with care.


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The final fight is balanced around unlimited source skills, once you recognize that it is actually very simple.

During my first playthrough I didn't bother using source skills since it is a chore keep visiting source fountains and then got rekt in the 1st attempt. I bought/memorized them and the 2nd attempt went much smoother

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Are you using the best tactics? Whenever I see someone complain how fights are impossible, I wonder how they explain the success that other people have.

Personally, I've beaten the game with three different sets of builds, all on Tactician. There are a variety of strategies you can use, but there are a few common threads to all of them.

The single most important quality is battlefield mobility. Each of your characters should have at least two leap spells -- i.e. tactical retreat, cloak and dagger, phoenix dive, etc. You can usually get the necessary skill points from gear.

Necromaster is not a good primary skill set in my opinion but it's great to have a point or two there for any intelligence-based character. Mosquito Swarm is so good, and it heals you when you are decaying. It's also good to get some healing when you do damage to vitality, in combination with Liquid Armor talent.

Your characters need to have balanced physical and magic armor. For strength- and intelligence-based characters, that means you will want to use some wizard gear alongside your fighter gear. Well, especially wizards using fighter gear.


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Originally Posted by XL83
Originally Posted by puff_ng
It's like Larian decided to give enemies a cheat code where they have infinite AP and no cooldowns on any abilities.

The Kraken summons multiple enemies with 10,000+ Armor and 10,000+ health who can move across the entire map and attack 2-3 times in a single turn? The Sallow Man can stack the same debuff on you for a -9 Constitution penalty? Kemm can kill anyone in two hits with Overpower. Braccus Rex teleports, casts Meteor Shower, and then casts Cursed Fireball. If you're not dead by then the Kraken and Dallas also spam AoE abilities that cover half the map. There is no gear in the game that lets you survive this shit.

It's bullshit, plain and simple. I was actually looking forward to finishing the game and then starting a new playthrough with different companions and builds but I sure as hell won't be doing that now. I'm just going to watch the ending on Youtube.

Someone needs to write a proper review of DoS2 and point out all the bullshit this game has that all the "professional reviewers" who seemingly only played Act 1 have missed or ignored and given it 9s and 10s.



Hear, hear.

I'm not even at the end of the game yet and I'm about to pack it in. This has gone from literally my favorite game, one I couldn't even wait to get home from work to play, to something I'm forcing myself to make progress in because it's installed on my PC. I can't believe something I enjoyed this much turned to shit this fast.

Every single encounter is so set up in the enemies favor it just isn't fun anymore. The point isn't whether I'm able to beat an encounter, it's whether it's actually fun to play, and it doesn't pass that test when every single fight starts with a giant explosion of Necrofire on top of my clustered party (I don't know how people can even defend this anymore, I tried to believe it was just my imagination but since I've been tracking, the last 8 encounters in a row!!!! have all had cursed fire, I am not exaggerating even slightly) and usually on the first enemy turn. I spend my first turn trying to repair the damage and spread my party out (if I didn't reload a save and meta game by moving my toons all over the map, yeah that's great design smirk it's just like tabletop gaming, remember when your DM lets you take back your moves, position your party favorably and get a mulligan in combat? FUCK NO, me neither) and they spend their next several turns source vamping me (the Dreamer encounter with Malady, Alexander and Windego stole all 12 source points from my entire party before I could use them because I was spending all my AP trying to get to black mirrors while they spent all their AP cheaply cursing, charming, and burning me to death and then just moving me out of the way if I got close to the mirrors), then charming me and popping every expensive potion and burning every scroll I have. Wtf is that? It's not even tactically sound, the enemy just literally takes control of you and wastes your items, it's nonsense.

I know what I'm doing here, my builds are all basically min maxed, everything is focused, no points are being wasted and I have the best loot I can find in every available slot. In Act 3 I literally one-shot Rhalic because I was so overpowered. Act 3 had no challenge whatsoever for me. Now Act IV is so tedious I want to pull my own eyeballs out so I never have to see the word "Fight!" on my screen again. They pretty much ruined this one for me and I'm really disappointed.

The combat system, at heart, is GREAT. Stop "helping" it by giving every enemy 2-3 times as much health, armor and AP as me, always giving them initiative, and just generally using cheap ass cheesy tactics in every single fight.


Damn dude, well said. I feel the same way. Forced myself to play the last 20-30 hours hoping the game would improve, but it really was not fun 90% of the time. Occasionally I'd win a fight and chuckle. Beating the game was just relief that it was over.

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You can actually break all the mirrors before you trigger the fight.

Last edited by sehnsucht; 23/12/17 02:14 PM.
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Originally Posted by XL83
Originally Posted by puff_ng
It's like Larian decided to give enemies a cheat code where they have infinite AP and no cooldowns on any abilities.

The Kraken summons multiple enemies with 10,000+ Armor and 10,000+ health who can move across the entire map and attack 2-3 times in a single turn? The Sallow Man can stack the same debuff on you for a -9 Constitution penalty? Kemm can kill anyone in two hits with Overpower. Braccus Rex teleports, casts Meteor Shower, and then casts Cursed Fireball. If you're not dead by then the Kraken and Dallas also spam AoE abilities that cover half the map. There is no gear in the game that lets you survive this shit.

It's bullshit, plain and simple. I was actually looking forward to finishing the game and then starting a new playthrough with different companions and builds but I sure as hell won't be doing that now. I'm just going to watch the ending on Youtube.

Someone needs to write a proper review of DoS2 and point out all the bullshit this game has that all the "professional reviewers" who seemingly only played Act 1 have missed or ignored and given it 9s and 10s.



Hear, hear.

I'm not even at the end of the game yet and I'm about to pack it in. This has gone from literally my favorite game, one I couldn't even wait to get home from work to play, to something I'm forcing myself to make progress in because it's installed on my PC. I can't believe something I enjoyed this much turned to shit this fast.

Every single encounter is so set up in the enemies favor it just isn't fun anymore. The point isn't whether I'm able to beat an encounter, it's whether it's actually fun to play, and it doesn't pass that test when every single fight starts with a giant explosion of Necrofire on top of my clustered party (I don't know how people can even defend this anymore, I tried to believe it was just my imagination but since I've been tracking, the last 8 encounters in a row!!!! have all had cursed fire, I am not exaggerating even slightly) and usually on the first enemy turn. I spend my first turn trying to repair the damage and spread my party out (if I didn't reload a save and meta game by moving my toons all over the map, yeah that's great design smirk it's just like tabletop gaming, remember when your DM lets you take back your moves, position your party favorably and get a mulligan in combat? FUCK NO, me neither) and they spend their next several turns source vamping me (the Dreamer encounter with Malady, Alexander and Windego stole all 12 source points from my entire party before I could use them because I was spending all my AP trying to get to black mirrors while they spent all their AP cheaply cursing, charming, and burning me to death and then just moving me out of the way if I got close to the mirrors), then charming me and popping every expensive potion and burning every scroll I have. Wtf is that? It's not even tactically sound, the enemy just literally takes control of you and wastes your items, it's nonsense.

I know what I'm doing here, my builds are all basically min maxed, everything is focused, no points are being wasted and I have the best loot I can find in every available slot. In Act 3 I literally one-shot Rhalic because I was so overpowered. Act 3 had no challenge whatsoever for me. Now Act IV is so tedious I want to pull my own eyeballs out so I never have to see the word "Fight!" on my screen again. They pretty much ruined this one for me and I'm really disappointed.

The combat system, at heart, is GREAT. Stop "helping" it by giving every enemy 2-3 times as much health, armor and AP as me, always giving them initiative, and just generally using cheap ass cheesy tactics in every single fight.


Wish I did not agree so heartily. I wanted to love this game, I really did. But the combat is such a hateful chore. It's not fun at all, the combat has literally NEVER been fun because of how much the enemy NPCs are CHEATS. Jesus, Larian.

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The existence of pre-positoning and buffs is the bane of the combat from my point of view, since because of these simple mechanics, they are "forced" to create what you can call 'bullshit encounters' to keep fights interesting. It's such a chore micro managing every character, by tediously hinging/unhinging them one after another both before and after every fight. Astounding tbh.


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